you take your heart and walk away
by singsongsung
Summary: Future-fic. Dan/Serena/Carter. "You're such a cliche, Serena," her best friend sighs.


**A/N:** Set in some indeterminate future; Serena-centric. Reviews, as always, are love.

**you take your heart and walk away.**

--

There is something stupid and selfish and _sixteen_ about the way she buys a ticket, boards a plane, and leaves her life and her luggage behind.

And she relishes it.

--

She cries when she finishes it, the neatly bound novel with the textured cover.

She looked for herself in the protagonist, read it twice over and searched and searched. She expected the leading lady to be a mirror, inviting her in with similarities. Instead, she encounters a wall.

Dan Humphrey doesn't write about her anymore.

--

She calls Blair from Paris, the city of love and no one to share it with.

"You're such a cliché, Serena," her best friend sighs, and she smiles,

"So come be cliché with me, B."

The Atlantic ocean stretches out between them.

--

"I thought it would be about me," she admits to him five weeks later, sheltered in the corner of a Brooklyn café; her grande latte looms over his tiny espresso cup.

Selfish, stupid, sixteen – only her age has changed.

His eyes run over her face in that familiar way, gaze gentle and warm. He looks _good_, grown-up. "In all honesty, I did too."

She sips her coffee and she waits – he's always had the words in their relationship.

"But then I finished it, and it just…it wasn't."

Serena swallows. "Will it ever be again?"

--

Their clothes are strewn across the floor of her hotel room haphazardly, his whole body pressed to hers as her fingers grasp desperately at her sheets.

(He still says that he loves her after they fuck; there is no sound in the room but their breathing, but she feels his mouth move against her cheek, understands the shapes his lips form.)

--

The bathroom mirror steams up, a hazy cloud, and she draws on it with her index finger as he wraps his arms around her from behind, presses a trail of kisses down the coloumn of her neck as his hands work to un-knot her towel where it is secured just to the side of her breast.

"You saved me, once, you know."

_You knew who I was; you saved me._

He shakes his head. "I thought that's what I was doing."

"Whatever it was – " _Again, again, again._

She blows on the mirror; their initials fade away.

--

"I loved you." The back of her chair is too stiff and she's drinking water out of a wine glass and this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

"We were kids."

New York moves a mile-a-minute on the streets below them. It's been a while since she knew how to keep up. "For a long time, that was the only thing I knew. That I loved you. And you loved me back. You…" _You put me back together._

He touches her cheek tenderly. "A part of me is always going to love you back."

Tears slide down her cheeks slowly, her misery in no hurry to leave her alone. "That's not enough."

--

She figures she's broken, and maybe she always has been. She gets _pieces_ and _parts_ and never a whole. She's nobody's heroine.

_Learn to save yourself, Serena_.

--

She calls Nate when she's in Tokyo, smoking on a rooftop during a break from her shoot.

"Remember when you loved me?" she asks, like it was puppy love, child's play, meaningless, _why did you love me why did you stop_.

He laughs a little, but she can't tell if it's sincere. "You're an impossible girl to forget."

--

Dan meets her at JFK with a bouquet of lilies and, "I love you."

She knows what comes next.

--

The little things are not issues for them anymore, the way her name still garners more attention than his despite all his success, the tendency she has to forget phone messages, the way he wears socks with his sandals sometimes.

He's still so easy to love.

So for months, she ignores the moments late at night, when they're wide awake but separate, silent, and she knows they're both thinking _what if_.

--

They break up in the summertime at the rickety kitchen table in his apartment. It's still _his_, not _theirs_ – his shelves are stacked with books she'll never read, his cupboards full of the ingredients for a chilli recipe she doesn't even like. Serena's things stand out, Gucci bags and oversized sunglasses tossed over newspapers and old movies on VHS. In this apartment, she wears Dan's old college sweaters and plays pretend.

"I don't know where we went wrong." She tilts the bottle of syrup slowly, watching the gooey, sugary liquid fill each little square of the waffles she's eating.

"I think it was at the beginning." Dan's sitting by the open window, a pencil tucked behind one ear. There's a notebook open beside him; she can tell that he wants to write.

"You want me when you can't have me," she accuses. She's cold, even with the sunshine and her sweater wrapped around her.

"I want you when I shouldn't," he corrects her, gaze steady. "Which is more often than I'd like to admit."

--

"You're not who I always imagined you to be. Even once I fell in love with you, you weren't quite – "

"I'm less."

"You're more."

"Then I'll be less!" She yells, but she smiles in spite of herself.

He slips his arms around her waist and kisses her, _hard_, tastes like yesterday and yesteryear. "I wouldn't want that for you."

Serena reaches for the handle of her bag. "You still love me," she says softly.

His lips curl, exactly one-half of a grin. "You're an impossible girl, you know that?"

--

Carter Baizen finds her in Hawaii: she's lying on the beach one afternoon, eyes closed against the sun, and it's _hey, beautiful_ like it's always been.

--

"So, I read that story."

"What story?" Serena asks absently. She's been both trying to seduce and avoid him in equal measure, which, she supposes, sums up their entire relationship rather nicely.

"You know, the one that guy wrote."

She slides her sunglasses down on her nose and glares at him. He smirks back.

"Your high school boyfriend. The one who wore cardigans."

Serena huffs, ignoring the pitter-patter beat of her heart. "I don't have any idea who you're talking about."

He recognizes the Rhodes side of her when he sees it. "The _nerd_, baby."

She punches his arm. The subject is dropped.

--

"Where are you running off to, beautiful?"

His voice catches her off-guard, just as her hand settles over the door handle of their hotel room.

"Nowhere," she says, and it's such an obvious lie that she has to whisper it.

She can see only the outline of his body as he sits up in the darkness. "Let's go nowhere, then. In the morning, like civilized people."

"Carter – "

"You don't get to run away on me. Not again."

She blinks, grinds her back teeth together. She needs to go home.

"Tell me and I'll take you there, Serena."

--

"You wrote about me," she says without preamble when she shows up on Dan's front steps.

She doesn't give him a chance to respond before she falls into her arms, her lips finding his (and that's the thing, about him, that she can't let go – the way he always catches her).

--

_There were pieces for her that weren't meant for me, no matter how hard I fought for them._

She lets Dan's manuscript flutter shut and wraps her arms around him from behind instead, pulls his phone from his hand and says, "Forget ordering food, let's go back to bed."

--

"I think you love me best when I'm not here."

The corner of Dan's blanket is frayed. "Well. That can't be healthy."

"I'm not looking for healthy," she says simply, and she's struck by the truth of it, something she hadn't known until now. "I'm looking for happy."

He laughs, his hand slipping into her hair. "You… I can never write you as well when I have you. I can't put you on paper, Serena van der Woodsen."

She flattens her hand against his chest, feels the _thumpthumpthump_ of his heartbeat. "I don't want paper."

Dan gives her a long look and half of a smile. "Of course you don't," he murmurs.

--

Carter picks her up at quarter after midnight, doesn't comment on the fact that she looks like a fourteen-year-old after a school dance – doesn't mention the blatantly obvious hickey on her neck or the state of her hair. He sends the towncar off and they walk instead, pausing at a footbridge to lean on the rail and drink cheap beer.

"It could've been different."

"In another lifetime," he agrees, his hand lingering at the small of her back.

"Do you _really_ never forget your first love?" Dan is her fallback, her salvation, and the piece of her that is sixteen still wholeheartedly believes he is The One; if it felt like forever, then, it should still feel like forever, now.

Carter's eyes burn into hers, and she realizes then that their gazes match, heartbroken blues. "No, I don't think you do."

He kisses her like a question and she pulls away with a gasp, still thinking of Dan and too afraid to answer. "I should die young," she tells the water underneath them, unwilling to look into Carter's face. "That's the best way to be remembered, when you still have all your potential."

He growls, "Shut up, Serena," and this time, he kisses her like an answer she's been waiting for without knowing it.

--

"I'll stay here with you."

"You won't. You don't want to."

His jaw clenches. "I just said I would, didn't I? You don't have to contradict everything I say, you know."

"I'm still – I need to be here. I need to be with – " _him_.

Carter levels her with a look over the screen of his laptop. "I'll stay here with you."

"That's not how it's going to work," she whispers. His things are everywhere in her hotel room; they're at the point where they're starting to dare one another to disappear. "I'm not just going to give you pieces. You deserve a whole."

"Maybe I just want pieces." He closes his computer, pulls her into his lap. "I'll trade you: yours for mine."

--

"Did you know I've spent my whole life living in hotel rooms?" She's sitting with her legs thrown across Carter's, a ragged copy of Dan's novella in her hands. "I want to be home. I'm always going to want to be home. And I don't know if you ever will."

"And what's home?" His tone is scathing, but she hears the cause beneath; it's in her own voice, _don'tletmego_. "With Dan Humphrey?" He sneers.

"Maybe! Yes. No." She sighs. "I don't know. That's the whole point. I'm trying to figure it out."

He slips a hand under her skirt, uses the other to tug the book from her hands. "So let me help you."

-

Blair marries Chuck in the springtime when they are all twenty-five.

"To the first of many husbands!" Serena cheers playfully, toasting to a future full of happiness, two champagne glasses and her best friend in a white dress in the room at the back of the cathedral.

She pulls Blair into a bone-crushing hug, and when they let go of one another Blair's hands land on Serena's cheeks. "I'll always love you best," she laughs.

"Back atcha," Serena agrees solemnly.

(Nate is her date, and they laugh together at the bar during the reception, but that's all it is; they loved each other too much too soon.)

--

"You love him, don't you? You're in love with Brooklyn."

"Brooklyn is a _place_. You can't just generalize people like that."

--

He traps her back against the wall, and she's pinned there, his hands on either side of her. She doesn't breathe for a moment.

"You've always run from me. And you've always run _to_ him. Have you realized that?"

"Not true."

"_Stop_ it, Serena. It is true."

"It's just because – it was okay, with him, you know? He taught me that it was okay. It was okay to love him and it was okay to come back for him. It was _okay_."

"And not me? It can't be like that with me?"

"You're different," she whispers, and she sees on his face all the things she's always known were there but never wanted to acknowledge. "I didn't ask you to stay."

"No. You never have." His lips hover close to hers. "What am I to you, Serena? Tell me."

"I don't – "

"You know. You've always known."

She pushes at his chest. "Don't do that thing where you tell me what – "

"You, to me, are exactly what he is to you."

--

"I thought we left love triangles behind in high school," Serena huffs.

Blair lifts her hair off her shoulders, examines her reflection in the mirror. "_I_ did."

"Helpful, B."

Slipping a bracelet on her wrist, Blair asks, "Well, do you love him?"

"Who?"

With a pointed look, Blair agrees, "Yes. Who?"

--

"I'm not being fair to you, am I?" Serena whispers, her face tucked against Carter's neck.

"You can make it up to me, baby," he says, voice low, and she smiles a little against his mouth as he kisses her. She's prepared to tell him to be serious, but then he pulls away from her and says, "Marry me."

--

"I always knew he was trouble."

"Mm-hm." From behind her sunglasses, Serena glares at the Mediterranean Sea. She picks an olive off her pizza, holds her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder

"I told him he's an idiot."

"Thank you."

"But you're kind of being an idiot, too, S," Blair tells her gently.

Serena sighs, takes a long drink of whatever's in her glass (it's strong and that's what counts). "That was a short-lived pep talk."

--

Blair calls once a month, like clockwork, reports on the lives of _ChuckandBlair_.

Dan's next novel is scheduled to go to press in six months.

Carter disappears again; rumour is that he's in Texas, of all places.

Serena finds herself crying in a bathroom at Heathrow and she doesn't know who to blame.

--

"Eric has a boyfriend!"

Serena hangs up on Blair and sends her little brother a goofy e-card with a long message attached.

--

"Nate's dating a Buckley."

"_Really?_"

"Yes. It's all very Shakespearean."

"How unoriginal."

"Crass, really."

--

"B, you will not believe – "

"Serena. I'm pregnant."

--

Blair greets her at the airport with open arms and an unapologetic smile. "I lied," she says, totally unrepentant, once Serena gathers her up in a hug. "But thank you for coming home."

Serena rolls her eyes and whacks Blair with her neck pillow. "Make me an aunt if you really want to thank me. You _owe_ me, now."

--

Her feet tap nervously under the tiny table in the Brooklyn coffee shop. "So."

"So."

"Carter proposed to me."

Dan's eyebrows lift slowly.

"I didn't – I just left."

"Because of me."

She smiles, bites her lip. "Because of _me_, I think."

--

"You've grown up, you know."

Serena grins at him, bumps his hip with her own. "So have you, _Romeo_."

"_Stop_," Nate groans with a playful roll of his eyes. "I'm being serious. You're different."

"Different _good_?"

He nods and sweeps her iced coffee from her hand. "You should let yourself feel good, too."

"How _wise_ you've gotten…" She takes her drink back and sticks her tongue out at him. "Tell me about the girl, Archibald."

--

"I think maybe I just need to start over, B. Maybe I'll just stay away."

"You don't leave the people who love you." Blair's arms are crossed and her lips are pursed. Chuck drinks his scotch in silence, lounging on the sofa. It's almost comforting to notice, for the first time, that maybe they haven't quite grown up yet either.

"I'm trying to _find_…"

Chuck leans forward. "You know, I could have my people –"

"No," both girls say patiently, in unison.

"You said you wanted to find home, S," Blair says softly. She has a townhouse and an empire and a ring on her finger.

Serena nods. "I need…a real job, and I need to find…where I belong."

Chuck rolls his eyes and turns to his wife. "She's going to find Carter."

"You could at least _whisper_, Chuck. I'm _right here_."

"I'm just saying, I could have my people – "

Serena reaches for Blair, buries her face in her friend's hair as they hug. "I'll always love you best."

--

It happens three and a half months later in Turkey, on the day she ironically happens to be wearing a pure white sundress. It's so hot that she dumps an entire bottle or Perrier over her head, and when she blinks her eyes open, he's standing in front of her like some kind of mirage.

He smirks. "What're you doing here, beautiful?"

--

"I never expected you to say yes," he says over dinner.

She slips her feet out of her sandals and rests them on top of his instead. "Quit playing games with my heart."

Carter squints. "N'SYNC?"

"Backstreet Boys." She licks whipped cream off her finger.

"You told me once there was a reason you always came back to me."

"Well. I didn't lie." She laughs. "You think I'm impossible, don't you?"

He shakes his head, gives her an affectionate look. "I think you're extraordinary."

--

Dan's next book isn't about her either, but it doesn't surprise her this time.

She reads it on the airplane, first class seats back to Manhattan, and she falls asleep halfway through with her head on Carter's shoulder.

(The girl, this time, is more of a broken mirror than anything else – she sees small, ragged pieces of herself; he kept some her best and worst parts and made them elements of this enthralling character.)

"Let's go, beautiful," Carter says, lips lingering against her forward as she stirs out of her slumber. "We're here."

He tugs the book gently from her hands and slips it into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him, an uncharacteristically jealous gesture that makes her smile sleepily. He offers her his hand and she entwines their fingers, holding on tight.

The book gets left behind. She doesn't need to read the ending – it isn't hers.

--

Blair is pregnant – for real, this time – and when Chuck goes off in search of celebratory champagne after they reveal their news, she tells Serena that Nate broke up with _that Buckley girl_ but he's fine, he's happy, and Dan is a _best-selling author_, he's fine, he's happy.

"They're practically best friends now," Blair remarks demurely. "Coffee and books and soccer dates. Those two are inseparable."

"Nate and Dan?" Serena glances at Carter and raises her eyebrows, amused.

He lifts his eyebrows by way of reply but says nothing.

Chuck calls for Blair, needs her help finding something, and she rolls her eyes as she excuses herself, calling back to Chuck about _ask Dorota_ before she's even out of the room.

"Dan and Nate, _seriously_," Serena muses.

Carter smirks, his fingers squeezing hers. "Your own lonely hearts club, baby."

And then, right there on Blair and Chuck's couch, he kisses her, heavily but sweetly, a little possessively, and when the kiss breaks she finds that there's a key in her palm, a cool metal thing with sharp ridges that wasn't there before.

His mouth against the side of hers, he murmurs, "I don't want a membership."

Serena smiles, feels the pulse of _home_, here, with him; a hand at his chin, she pulls him into another kiss.

--

Maybe she could be somebody's heroine, after all.


End file.
